I have decided to join the blogging craze. I am looking forward to taking a moment to find out a little more about the plants I have been photographing. I hope to explore all aspects of plants, flowers, trees and other garden related topics. Sorry about having to watermark the photos but there are a lot of people using them without permission.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Red Tree Peony

This amazing plant was in bloom at Planting Fields last Sunday. It is always a surprise to me how many people aren’t familiar with this cousin of the herbaceous Peony. It is an easy plant to grow and generally doesn’t need staking. ‘Hoki’ is a particularly striking version of the Tree Peony. Its vivid flowers were easily spotted a hundred yards away and it stood out among the Tree Peony collection, which had several other outstanding cultivars. It also had a nice fragrance.

This Tree Peony grows to about 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide. Tree Peonies are actually woody shrubs and not trees. They can take up to three years to get established and start flowering heavily. It has woody stems that should not be cut back.